What is going on over at the Academy? For years, I have questioned whether it made sense for the organization to continue awarding short films, seeing as how they are no longer a routine part of th…
What is going on over at the Academy? For years, I have questioned whether it made sense for the organization to continue awarding short films, seeing as how they are no longer a routine part of the moviegoing experience . Except in rare cases, when an animation studio attaches one to its latest feature-length cartoon, it’s been decades since shorts got serious theatrical play.
I was wrong. In recent years, as a rise in on-demand, at-home viewing points the way for the industry’s future, shorts are getting more exposure than ever. Streamers now embrace them: You can watch last year’s winner, “Two Distant Strangers,” on Netflix. And once the nominations are announced, audiences pay good money to see them on the big screen. At the time of this writing, just days before the Academy Awards, the box office for the live action shorts program has surpassed $1.
This despite the fact that the 2022 crop is somewhat disappointing, and predictably dour. That’s how the Academy likes ’em. Even though plenty of amusing, entertaining and downright hilarious short films are made every year, voters seem to prefer dreary, pathetic and/or issue-driven entries — like “.” Danish director Martin Strange-Hansen has won before and knows how to tweak the Academy’s heartstrings.
The most cinematically polished of the entries, Warsaw Film School grad Tadeusz Lysiak’s thesis film, “The Dress,” centers on a lonely woman with achondroplasia — a risky move at a moment when the Academy is mandating inclusivity, but going about it wrong can get artists in trouble. Lysiak, who is not a dwarf, imagines a character who says, “I want to be a normal woman,” and gazes enviously upon a conventionally beautiful blond woman in the hotel where she works.
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